In processing a semiconductor substrate, such as thinning a semiconductor substrate, such as a silicon wafer, forming a circuit pattern at one part of a plane of the semiconductor substrate, and forming a through electrode, such as a through silicon via (TSV) on the semiconductor substrate, in order to maintain flatness of a processing surface of the semiconductor substrate, a supporting substrate is attached to the semiconductor substrate using an adhesive in a state where a warp of the semiconductor substrate is corrected before the processing.
After processing the semiconductor substrate, the supporting substrate should be removed from the semiconductor substrate. In order to remove the supporting substrate from the semiconductor substrate, for example, the semiconductor substrate or the supporting substrate may be pulled in a perpendicular direction of a substrate plane using a jig or the like. However, adhesion strength of the adhesive between the supporting substrate and the semiconductor substrate may be high. If so, it is not easy to remove the supporting substrate from the semiconductor substrate by pulling one of them with respect to the other.
In addition, in order to remove the supporting substrate from the semiconductor substrate, the semiconductor substrate or the supporting substrate may be peeled from the other by bending the semiconductor substrate or the supporting substrate. Since the semiconductor substrate after being processed is extremely thin, and is likely to be damaged when being bent, it is preferable that the supporting substrate, rather than the semiconductor substrate, be bent and peeled off. However, since a rigidity of the supporting substrate tends to be high, it is not easy to bend and peel off the supporting substrate.